The Study Of Visual Selective Attention Based On The Simon Effect

Visual selective attention requires people to choose some objects as the perception.And the others can only be treated as background.But it doesn’t mean that they won’t affect people’s perception.Especially when these objects have some conflicts with the target object will affect people to percept.The famous Stroop effect proved this point.Though people know that don’t react to the word,people still process the word.The Simon effect also found this phenomenon.People unconsciously process the location of the stimulus.This study based on the Simon effect to discuss whether the location of the non-target stimulus will affect processing the target stimulus.In this study,we design four experiments to investigate this problem.Experiment one manipulates the location of the target stimulus and the location of the non-target stimulus to explore whether individual will be affected by the location of the non-target stimulus.Experiment uses3(stimulus configuration:the same object conditon,the irrelevant frame condition,the relevant frame condition) X2(the location of the filled-square corresponds with the location of the response or not: consistency,inconsistency)two-factors within-subjects design.The dependent variable are the subjects’reaction time and the correct percentage.Experiment two based on the experiment one to discuss is there any difference when the color of the non-target stimulus become white.Experiment three makes the location of the non-target stimulus and the location of the target stimulus correspond with the location of the response more obviously.Then it will investigate the impact of the location of the non-target stimulus.Experiment uses2(stimulus configuration:the relevant bar block,the relevant box)×2(the location of the target stimulus corresponds with the location of the response or not:consistency,inconsistency)×2(the location of the non-target stimulus corresponds with the location of the response or not:consistency,inconsistency)three-factors within-subjects design. The dependent variable are the subjects’ reaction time and the correct percentage.Experiment four uses SOA to control the presentation time of the non-target stimulus and the location of the non-target stimulus to study how it affects the procession of the target stimulus.Experiment uses2(stimulus configuration:the integrated condition,the separated condition) X3(SOA:the filled-square appeared150ms before the color change,the filled-square appeared simultaneously with the color change,the filled-square appeared150ms after the color change) X2(the location of the target stimulus corresponds with the location of the response or not:consistency,inconsistency)three-factors within-subjects design. The dependent variable are the subjects’reaction time and the correct percentage.Through the research we draw the following several conclusions:(1)If the location of the non-target stimulus has conflict with the location of the response,it will interfere people to process the target stimulus.(2)If the location of the response and the location of the target stimulus are all on the left side,the reaction time is more short than when they won’t correspond.(3)Compared to the location of the non-target stimulus,the subjects were mainly affected by the location of the target stimulus corresponds with the location of the response or not.It means that though the subjects will be affected by the non-target stimulus,the intention has more powerfull.It will guide they to focus their attention on the target stimulus. Keywords:Simon effect, The target stimulus, The non-target stimulus, Visual selective attention...